52. Vesper
VESPER
“Locke!” I call, searching the crowded streets for him. The streets here are filled with NPCs and players, a variety that reach out toward me as I pass. “Locke!”
“Hey, watch it!” a man snarls after I bump into him.
“Sorry,” I murmur, and keep pushing through. “Locke!”
“Hello, player! Can I interest you in—”
“Locke!” I yell again, frantically searching for him before he gets too far away from me. There’s no way to know which direction he’s gone, or even if he’s still in the area, but I have to try. He’d looked so upset. I can’t leave him like that. I don’t want to do this without him.
I rush forward, shoving through thickening crowds, getting stepped on and yelled at by players and NPCs alike.
I don’t know where Havoc has gone and I don’t really care.
The legend can fuck off at this point. Stevie is hovering behind me and Svetlana is flying through the air above, trying to find any sort of clue as to where he could have gone.
I break through the crowd and stumble into an alleyway that is strangely empty of people. Svetlana lands on my shoulder, her legs moving back and forth in her usual stance.
“This looks . . . eerie,” she comments, staring down the alley.
“Locke?” I say, not as loud as before, almost a little hesitantly.
The alleyway is dirty and strewn with trash.
Old newspapers and things I can’t name are scattered across the concrete, leaving me to step on or over them.
The crunch of my boots hitting the trash and squashing it is loud in my ears, echoing against the walls, and I suddenly worry I’ll alert something else to my whereabouts.
“Locke,” I whisper, my eyes narrowing at the brightness at the other end of the alleyway.
I can’t exactly see what’s there, but something tells me to keep moving forward.
My instincts are screaming viciously, putting me on edge.
Svetlana feels my anxiety, and tenses, her arms raised in preparation for a fight.
There’s an almost static zing in my mind, but it fades quickly, my mental wall still firmly in place.
I move around a large trash receptacle and nearly jump out of my skin when a man sits up from a pile of trash.
“Sorry,” I mumble. “Just passing through.”
“Stop,” the NPC says. “Don’t go that way.”
I frown. “Why not?”
“Stop. Don’t go that way.” His eyes are wide and unseeing, and he’s as grimy as the trash around him. “Stop. Stop. Stop.”
Something in my chest tightens, but I push forward, my instincts screaming at me to continue. I may pay for it later, but . . . my instincts haven’t steered me wrong yet.
Another man pops up from the trash on my left and I shriek a little at the sudden bolt upright position he takes.
“Turn back now,” the man says in a dead tone and wide-open eyes. “Stop. Turn back now. Stop.”
Why are they just repeating themselves? I know NPCs have a limited script, but they don’t usually do it like this. Neither of them responds to me when I ask why. I lean down toward the second man and wave my hand in front of his face. Nothing. He doesn’t react at all. As if I’m not even here.
“What the fuck?” I rasp, looking toward the opening even closer now.
I should probably stop and turn around. That’s what these NPCs want.
But I have to find Locke, and something tells me he’s at the end of this alleyway.
Carefully, despite the NPCs repeating their warnings in an eerie choir, I pick my way through the rest of the trash.
I drop my Bloodsense Fang into my hand, prepared to fight if needed.
Squinting my eyes as I reach the end, I take in the scene before me.
I’m standing at the edge of a large hexagonal courtyard.
There are no people here, no bustling crowds, no NPCs with dire warnings of turning back.
There’s no trash either, at least, not in the same way as the alley.
Instead of old newspapers and garbage, there are suitcases all stacked along the edges of the courtyard, scattered around the pristine white tile, most of them closed, but a few open and showcasing scattered items. In the center of the courtyard is what looks like a small river that circles a very large statue of a woman.
The small river is filled with crystal clear water, and there’s a railing there circling it.
Leaning on that railing is the Bone Breaker I’m desperately looking for.
My shoulders relax in relief and I take a step forward. “Locke,” I breathe and he jerks at the sound of his name. “I don’t want you to go. I want you to—”
The sound of metal grating against metal interrupts my words and I frown, searching for the source of it.
I look up at the statue, taking in the aged copper of it.
The statue is of a woman, clearly. She’s dressed in a long flowing dress upon her pedestal.
The turquoise color of the statue catches the light, making me peer closer in confusion when it seems off, like there’s a shimmer.
The woman is holding a cone in one hand raised over her head.
At her feet is a cracked book, splayed open to reveal pages I can’t read.
She has her face in her other hand, covering it as if she’s crying.
It’s strange, but it isn’t my concern right now.
Locke straightens and turns to look at me. His lashes are wet, his cheeks reddened, and I forget all about the sound.
“Oh, Locke,” I start, taking a step toward him.
The metal against metal sound rips through the air again, this time too loud to ignore. I stop and look around, my brow furrowed. “Locke, come closer. I think that . . .”
A shadow casts over both of us as Locke starts moving toward me.
It’s a large shadow, an ominous one, and as we both tilt our heads up slowly to look for the source, I know we’re about to be in some serious trouble.
My eyes find those of the statue as she suddenly looms over us, her face scrunched in anger, black tracks down her eyes where she’s been crying.
The spikey crown on her head makes her anger even more imposing as she glares at us.
Only then do I realize just how damaged she is.
She’s covered in dents and cracks, massive misshapen holes where something must have hit her.
Even her face has scratches and small dents.
BOSS BATTLE INITIATED: LADY LIBERTY’S LAMENT
There are no instructions to defeat Lady Liberty. However, this battle comes with a hint. Lucky you. Are you ready?
Staring up at the turquoise statue in horror, I can barely form the words to answer. Thankfully, I don’t need to.
“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your decaying masses yearning to breathe free.
The wretched refuse of your rotting shore.
Send these, the players, the hunger-ridden to me.
I lift my lamp beside the golden door . . .
And ask you to light the flame of my liberty.”
My eyes widen and I take a step back. “What the fuck does that even mean?” I gasp, staring up at the woman.
The statue screams and steps off her pedestal, raising the cone above her head as her metal face twists with her fury.
She swings the cone at me like a hammer, and I just barely manage to leap out of the way before she can squash me.
Instead, it scraps against the white tile floor and sends sparks into the air.
“Locke!” I shriek, searching for the Bone Breaker.
“I see her!” he shouts back, leaping out of the way himself before the statue can stomp on him.
His face has been wiped clean, the only evidence of his tears the slight flush to his cheeks, but now we can’t even discuss what had happened.
We have to fight Lady Liberty first. “What the fuck do we do?”
The woman doesn’t speak. She doesn’t shout words to give any more clues.
She screams, though. By the Harrow, does she scream.
The shrill sound echoes around the courtyard and makes my ears hurt.
She stomps after me, her large metal feet shaking the ground with each step, her face etched drastically into that expression of pain and fury.
As the scream tears from her throat again, it spears into my heart, and twists like a knife.
That’s the sound of every woman’s pain.
I know it well. Every woman does. All my life in the shithole that is Dross, I’ve never met a woman without this same soul-deep anger. We’re made from it, woven from the fury, until we’re pieced together in some semblance of womanhood.
This fury is womanhood.
I stumble as the realization slams into me, and very nearly get taken out by her swinging cone because of it. I leap out of the way at the last second, thankful that I at least have a little extra agility in my stats than I had before I chose my Glitch.
Locke screams back at her, rushes forward, and slams his fist against her foot. The sound of cracking bones—his—echoes in the courtyard, and I wince.
“Fuck!” Locke snarls, but his shoulders flex and he seems to swell up more as his bones start to snap back into place. He hits her again, with the same outcome. It takes him two of those hits before he realizes the harsh truth.
His powers are useless here. The statue is a metal woman the size of the buildings around us. Hitting her does nothing.
Svetlana tickles my cheek.
“Any ideas?” I ask her as I move around the courtyard, trying my best to avoid the statue’s wrath.
Svetlana looks up at the statue. Those large eyes take her in, the black streaks, the fury, the pain, and then she looks back at me. “I will not behead her,” she says. “A woman in pain does not deserve to be knocked down even more.”